


Stellar Nursery

by deliverusfromsburb



Series: Tuesjade Prompts [6]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, TLC compliant, brief mention of alcoholism and addiction, postgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 09:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliverusfromsburb/pseuds/deliverusfromsburb
Summary: tuesjade prompt: space





	Stellar Nursery

**Author's Note:**

> I did like 2 minutes of research for this. Did you know the dust clouds where stars form are called stellar nurseries? It seemed like a good phrase to borrow for a title, especially since Kanaya's interest in horticulture and motherhood gives it a triple whammy of significance.

"Are you busy?"

You consider this. You are, at this very moment, considering your artificially miniature tree ( _bonsai_ , Dirk called it) trying to decide if it's growing too fast. There is no topiary for you to style with a chainsaw here, so you've channeled your gardening precision in smaller pursuits. Aradia introduced you to the technique, which she says is an East Alternian tradition. She thought you might like it, and the process looks soothing from a distance. Up close, it involves a lot of neuroticism about angles. Or maybe that’s just how you do it.

Although you've been deep in contemplation of which branches might need pruning, to external observers you've been staring at a tree for fifteen minutes. The contemplation might have veered off course a while ago. Your mind is foggy a lot these days.

Speaking of which, Jade is waiting for a response. "Not exactly," you hazard.

The two of you cross paths often in her greenhouse. You and Calliope are its most frequent visitors. Sticking your hands into soil is a good way to ground yourself in a life where you’re still putting down roots. When she’s busy with a project, Jade will only nod as you walk by, but if she’s passing through she likes to chat. You’d only spoken for a few hours while cooperating on creating the genesis frog, but then you’d gotten along. You’d bonded laughing about the Knights assisting you and reminiscing about childhoods spent gazing at the clouds and longing for company. She could be prickly too – demanding passwords or doubting your intentions. A troll on Pesterchum, even a polite one, wasn’t important enough for her to hide those parts of herself from. It’s a quirk of her character that strangers are the ones who knew her best.

Now, she leans in to admire your work. Her hair is growing out, but it doesn't cover the curve of her neck as she reaches out to tap the pot. "It's so cute!"

You readjust the pot's position. "Could you move your carotid artery out of my line of sight? It's distracting."

She hops back and sits on a greenhouse table reserved for equipment. A watering can topples over with a thunk. "Is the vampire thing still a problem?"

"It's a work in progress." What it is is maddening. Your life has been set to half speed - where once you were the fastest of your group on foot (discounting flash stepping), now you lag behind. Your thoughts lag too, making your conversational pauses even more ponderous while you trudge through mental muck. Rose and Roxy have had it as bad with different symptoms. You and Rose spent the morning slumped over the kitchen table pulling grotesque faces at each other. She'd squeezed your hand and said, "I feel _terrible_ " with exhausted pride. At least you're not going through this alone.

"I'm not going to abandon all restraint and attack you,” you reassure Jade, “but it's like dangling a raw haunch in front of a cholerbear."

“Sorry I’m so delicious!” she says with a laugh, and hunches her shoulders up around her neck. "I'll try not to be too tempting. But I do have something else that might distract you. Do you want to come to outer space?"

You look back at some sprigs of new growth questing too far above the tree's canopy and itch for pruning shears. "I know we share an Aspect, but my interests have always been more terrestrial."

"You won't be disappointed, I promise."

 

There's a temporary transportalizer plugged into an outlet in Jade's room. They're simple to drop down and activate, thanks to alchemizing them with fenestrated portal technology. Maybe they're too easy to use - Jake left one in the bathroom once, and when Terezi went to take a shower she ended up in an ocean several thousand light years away. She hid a fish in his bed when she got back.

"This seems out of character," you say. Jade usually teleports rather than taking the stairs.

"My range isn't as far these days, and we're going way out."

You rub a smear of toothpaste off the faux-marble rim of the sink. “Should we tell anyone we’re leaving?”

She shakes her head and steps onto the telepad. Over her shoulder, in the instant before she vanishes, she calls, "It'll only take a few minutes. You'll want to see this. Trust me."

 

When you rematerialize, your first breath doesn't come. Jade sees your eyes widen, and she catches your arm before you can step back onto the exit telepad. "There's not much of an atmosphere here. Your game powers will kick in in a moment, don't worry." Sure enough, your next breath comes easier. You focus on respiration until you're reassured that you won’t lose consciousness, and then you look around.

The landscape is nothing but dust and rock. It could be the surface of the Veil laboratory meteor that served as your temporary home, except no structures jut out from the surface. The sky isn't the flat black of the furthest ring, but it isn't the starry expanse of normal space either. Instead, a bright haze of gasses swirls and churns.

"A star formed in the middle of this nebula," Jade tells you. "The rest of the disc around it is still taking shape into planets. Either this chunk wandered in from outside and gotten pulled into the star’s orbit, or otherwise its accretion happened way faster than anything else’s. I haven’t looked closely enough at it yet to tell." She scans the sky. "It looks like we're rotated away from what I brought you here to show you. I can handle a local jump on my own. Are you ready?"

You nod, and your atoms fizzle into green fire. Normally after a First Guardian teleport you blink the flashes out of your eyes, but now they remain dazzled. There's a rift in the middle of the haze, where a larger object has pulled surrounding dust and gasses into its mass. It's a shifting, molten sphere that you can only look at from the corners of your vision. "What is it?"

The light reflects off Jade's glasses, making them flash bright yellow when she turns to smile at you. "It's a planet being born."

 

After a few more seconds, you drop your gaze to the rock at your feet, blinking away afterimages. Your eyes burn. "Do you recognize it?" she asks.

"Yes, I'd be able to pick this particular glowing orb out of a lineup."

"Pff, don't be sarcastic. Use your spacey powers!"

You close your eyes with relief and try to reach out with a sense that isn't any of the five. Space usually feels uncomfortably vast, a place that could swallow you up and leave nothing behind. There is infinite creative potential in the cosmos, yes, but what it is most of all is empty. Void. Right now, though, it feels vibrant. Alternia was old, lit by a dying star growing too large for the species dependent on its rays. Everything in this place feels fresh with the birth of stars and planets. They have red hot cores and fission reactions that are only beginning to burn. Recognize it? "I'm not as expert at using them as you are."

She purses her lips. "If it helps, this hunk of rock we're on right now is going to be pulled into orbit and become that planet's moon. In a few billion years some of the gasses floating around will form an atmosphere and rain down to the planet’s surface to create oceans. Eventually it'll be able to support life." She raises her eyebrows like this should mean something to you. When you don’t speak, she says, "It's the planet where we'll raise the mothergrub."

You look back at the white-hot giant in the sky. Postponing the revival of your species is the right decision, you’re sure of that. Attempting to properly raise a mothergrub and then batches of wigglers while not even eight sweeps old and lightheaded from rainbow drinker withdrawal would only end in disaster. Few of you were raised well. None of you want to pass that along. Still, after seeing the matriorb shatter and finally getting it back, it’s hard to know your greatest responsibility is so far out of your sight, even if the screens have already shown you it will be fine. "It's not there now?"

"No, of course not. It won't be for another few billion years."

You hadn't checked all the readouts on the lab equipment. All the numbers for date ranges had been too large to grasp. Universes are vast in many dimensions, time and space. It’s something you’re only just coming to appreciate. "That's a long time to wait."

"John can take you there whenever you'd like. We don't have to move in chronological order. It's kind of like how you're not expected to read through an entire encyclopedia set front to back." She sticks out her tongue. "Although you can."

You’re not sure what an encyclopedia is, but this sounds like a sore subject. "Did you?"

"My grandpa only left me with so much to read, and I wanted to know what was going on with the rest of the world! They were very outdated though. I thought the Cold War was still happening. When a plane came by with a package drop after I finished the C volume, I hid in case it was a bomber."

"Cold War?” Human history has lots of wars, you’ve discovered.  Your race didn’t bother naming very many of their conflicts. They were too constant to separate out.  “Was that a war you only fought in cold climates?"

"Noooo, not exactly. I'll explain it some other time, it was kind of messy." She scuffs her foot through the dust, kicking up a cloud that settles quickly in the thin atmosphere. "We can go back now. I just thought you might like to see it all get started out here. And now you know we can flip to the page where the mothergrub is any time you like."

You turn back to glimpse the planet one more time. Someday, civilization will spring up there. You’ve seen it happen. In theory, you’ll be there to help. That’s the responsibility you were given, and it’s one you’re determined to execute – just not today.

Today, you’re watching a world get born. The energy of creation hums around you and thrums deep in your veins. Who needs someone else’s blood when you can have this?

A few nights after the game, you and Rose had climbed up onto the roof to watch the sunset. It was the first time either of you had seen one in sweeps. You half-expected Rose to say something scathing about how cliched it was as a romantic venue, but she stayed quiet until the last traces of light slipped under the horizon. “I know when I was drunk I said everything was beautiful like some roadside hippie peddling dreamcatchers,” she said. “Enough that it must have lost its meaning. But the world is beautiful sometimes.”

“You’ll make that concession?” you’d teased.

“I’m still at war with the fundamental injustices of reality. But…” She leaned against your shoulder. “We can stop and enjoy the highlights.”

“It’s beautiful,” you say now.

“There are a lot of really cool sights to see out here,” Jade says. “A whole universe full of them! But I know you had a tree to chop up. Are you ready to go home?”

“I think I can just about handle one planet at a time.” You wave farewell to the burning sphere in the sky. “When we’ve mastered that one, I’ll be back.”

“Before you know it,” Jade agrees, and she takes your hand, and you’re gone.


End file.
